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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Tour de Force That Started It All,
By Rick James (AUSTIN, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This is the 1st edition of a epochal treatise in rationalistic theism. The first edition hardcover is rare, having been printed in hardcover by Moody Press in 1957 in a printing of 2,000. Moreover, the plates were destroyed, according to an individual at Moody Press. Religious publishers aren't exactly the brightest stars in the universe when it comes to the importance of intellectual issues to belief trends in the overall culture. But fortunately, that doesn't matter. Information wants to be free. (Well, free already in a quantum-monadic world, but that's another story.)
Norman Geisler once told someone in a phone conversation that Stuart Hackett is the greatest living Christian philosopher. I agree. Sadly, he now has alzheimer's. The book shows how to self-referentially analyze statements to eliminate the possibility of opposing views, and to argue from the impossibility of an actually infinite temporal sequence or an actually infinite set of discrete extra-mental objects to a cause of the universe. Object dualism here bypasses the empirical issues, but Hackett is a Cartesian dualist just the same (See John Foster's The Immaterial Self, for a good defense of it btw.) He then argues that the mere existence of any instance of adaptation of means to ends implies that the necessary cause of the universe is an ultimate personal mind that sentient beings approximate in their interaction with their environment. Now the big question here is not just whether a single instance of such adaptation of means to ends would imply that the causal origin of the universe is a personal mind, but what do the results of a set of conditions imply about those conditions themselves. Anyway, the conclusion of the book is that, a reasoned belief that God exists is the result of a series of metatheoretic assumptions and first-order steps of inference, an intellectual cul-de-sac from which there is no logical escape, only a chosen or preferred one, as Nietzsche once bluntly remarked. Analyzing statements that refer to or qualify themselves dominates the entire work, even in relation to self-referential analysis itself and the prior structures of conceptionalization through which such issues are necessarily adjudicated. But the refutation of an infinite series, which is decisive for his cosmological argument, is ironically brief and cursory, so you'll have to check out other sources for a development of that refutation (Hint: using a principle of construction with no assigned limit does not imply an actual or actualizable infinite series. How did we get to the present moment, why temporal succession continues, how "infinity" is treated vs. "finite", empirical verfiability, transfinite mathematical considerations, etc. See Craig's Kalam Cosomological Argument on this last point.) But the whole point for the common person exposed to general universal statements about knowledge, truth, or reality---"Everything is X (determined, person-relative, illusion, maya, false, subjective, biased, hopeless, meaningless, futile, etc.)", is to ask: What about that statement ITSELF? Folks, any time you hear grandiose universals like these, and neither they nor their criteria and metatheoretic assumptions are EVER questioned, you know that pretentious evangelist of well-protected universal claims has shown their hand. Fortunately for them, most believers in God are too clueless to realize what's going on, but there are always a few lurking around, smiling in the shadows, who know the game and eventually move in for the kill. How can relativism mean the same thing to any mind from one moment to the next, as well as from one person to another? Was Marx's view itself merely economically determined and therefore not capable of being true, just a product of the economic conditions in which one is born or lives? Do the anti-reason and anti-rationalist views mimic rationality in spite of their claimed point? Once you start asking those kinds of questions, you realize that those views are always stated as if *they* get a free ride. Statements about statements, with a little implicit self-exemption so that you (hopefully) won't be able to ask those embarrassing self-referential questions. The next time you hear someone throwing around universals, try asking, "What about that view ITSELF? Most of the time, you'll find that this boils down to someone not wanting anyone to do any thinking, while criticizing other views without any self-questioning or examination of their *own* background assumptions. Sound familiar? "You're so bigoted, and I'm so objective and dispassionate about bigotry." Got it? There's no mention of this convenient little self-exemption for a reason. I became street-wise about these kinds of remarks, just by asking that simple question. What about that statement itself? There is still no single work that even *attempts* to cover virtually every argument and counterargument that has ever been put forth concerning the existence of God. Like business and software development, there is a failure to listen to what people are actually saying or asking. There really aren't that many arguments, objections, or views. There's maybe two dozen irreducibly distinct philosophies. But by the same token you'll find very little concerning metaphilosophical mind-commandments, mind-principle relations and obligation, value assumptions of epistemology or reason, performative inconsistency, self-referential analysis, starting points and the burden of proof, and whether the nature of a deistic or theistic God implies any obligation to save the world. Theists and atheists are for the most part oscillating insanities with hidden agendas that protect their most basic second-order assumptions. The real questions are: who has the best arguments against their own views, do they blink when it comes to scrutiny about validity or ultimate assumptions, and are they genuine when it comes to belief optimization in relation to the imminence of death. For a list of no-bs resources, see my Listmania List, "Atheism and God".
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